On July 31, 1963, the St. Louis Cardinals sent a 21-year-old rookie named Jeoff Long up to the plate to pinch hit for Bob Gibson, the right-hander who would later reach the Baseball Hall of Fame. Long struck out against Cincinnati's Jim O'Toole, but the at-bat opened a two-season major league career that also produced a base hit off Sandy Koufax. Long, an infielder and outfielder for the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago White Sox whose promise was cut short by a chronic knee injury, died September 25, 2026, in Elsmere, Kentucky, according to Yahoo Sports and The Big Lead. He was 84.

Jeoffrey Keith Long was born October 9, 1941, in Covington, Kentucky, the oldest of ten children of Chester and Pauline Bramel Long. His father and uncle ran the family's Long Brothers Bag Company and Cincinnati Drum Service, businesses Long returned to after his playing days ended. He grew up in Erlanger, Kentucky, and starred at Lloyd Memorial High School, batting .590 as a senior while also pitching to an 8-1 record.

Late on the night of June 19, 1959, Cardinals scouts Maurice Mozzali and Eddie Lyons signed the 17-year-old as a pitcher, for a bonus reported near $70,000 paid out over four years. Arm trouble from a 13-inning high school championship game had already begun to catch up with him, and at Winston-Salem in 1960 his manager, Chase Riddle, moved him off the mound. Long converted to first base the next year with the Winnipeg Goldeyes, batting .299 with 14 home runs, and by 1962 he was a middle-of-the-order threat for the Double-A Tulsa Oilers, hitting 30 home runs and driving in 80 runs as Tulsa won the Texas League championship.

St. Louis called him up on July 28, 1963, and three days later came the pinch-hit at-bat in Gibson's spot in the order. Long got his first major league hit on August 27, a single off San Francisco's Jack Sanford. The next spring, on Opening Day 1964 at Dodger Stadium, he lined a single off Koufax to the 410-foot mark in center field. "I thought, 'Gee whiz, this is terrific stuff,'" he recalled. His signature moment came May 15, 1964, when he hit his only major league home run, a two-run shot off Milwaukee's Bobby Tiefenauer that struck the scoreboard above the left-field wall at the old Busch Stadium in a 10-6 Cardinals win.

The Cardinals sold his contract to the Chicago White Sox on July 7, 1964, clearing a roster spot for Mike Shannon during St. Louis's run to the World Series title. "I was shocked to leave the Cardinals," Long said later. "It was my organization, who I signed with, where my heart was. And it was a great team." St. Louis still voted him a half-share of its World Series money. In Chicago, a slip on a wet field in Boston reinjured the knee he had first hurt playing high school football, and a foul ball cracked a rib in Detroit. He played his last major league game September 23, 1964, against the Los Angeles Angels, finishing with a career .193 average, 16 hits and one home run in 83 at-bats over 56 games, according to Baseball-Reference.

Long spent the next several seasons chasing his old form through multiple knee operations, sitting out 1966 through 1968 to work in the family business. He returned to the minors in 1969 with the Double-A Arkansas Travelers and the Triple-A Tulsa Oilers, then managed by Warren Spahn, before retiring at season's end. "I never regained but about 60 percent of the motion in that knee," he said. "I could hit, but I couldn't do much with the wheels."

He married Katherine "Kathy" Martin in June 1975; their daughter Lindsay later became a national champion diver at Southern Methodist University. That same June, Long entered the first National Open Long Driving Championship at Butler National Golf Club in Oak Brook, Illinois, and beat a field that included PGA Tour pro Jim Dent with a drive of 322 yards, 28 inches. He turned down the $12,000 prize to preserve his amateur status, giving it instead to the PGA Junior Golf Fund. "I could have used the money," he said. "I'm getting married this weekend." He returned as runner-up in 1976 and kept competing in long-drive contests through 1984.

Long spent decades in management at Cincinnati Drum Service, the business his father and uncle had founded, before the family sold it in 2010. Looking back on his brief playing career in 2008, he said: "I don't want to brag, but barring the physical situation, I think I'd have done fine. It didn't work out, but it was an enjoyable trip, the main thing, just being a Cardinal."

Long's major league line was brief by the numbers, 83 at-bats spread across two summers, but it held two footnotes any Cardinals or White Sox fan can still recite: the rookie who pinch hit for Bob Gibson in his first big league plate appearance, and the batter who found Sandy Koufax's fastball on Opening Day. He carried a hitch in his knee out of the game and a different kind of power into retirement, outdriving touring professionals on a golf course a decade later, and he ran the family drum and bag business in Northern Kentucky for the rest of his working life. He is survived by his wife, Kathy, and his daughter, Lindsay.